Saturday, November 15, 2014

Field Marshal Frederick “Little Bobs” Roberts, the 1st Earl Roberts of Kabul and Kandahar, the retired former Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, dies of pneumonia at age 82 in France, where he had gone to visit Indian troops. He bounced around the colonies most of his military career, which spanned the Indian Mutiny to the Boer War. He spent the last years before the war agitating for compulsory military service and for the army to rebel and refuse to enforce Irish Home Rule. At five foot two, he was too short to be an enlisted man, even with the newly reduced minimum height.

Headline of the Day -100: “Touch of Czarina Like Miracle Cure.” A barracks near the Winter Palace has been converted into a military hospital, and Mrs Tsar and a couple of the czarettes play at nurses.

Fashion Headline of the Day -100: “BELGIUM MAY BE INSPIRATION FOR WINTER'S NEW FASHIONS; Details of Costumes Worn by Inhabitants of Little Nation Which Has Stirred the Imagination of the World May Be Reproduced in Other Lands. Already Belgian Cap Is the Smart Thing in Millinery.” I’m assuming a Belgian cap is some sort of contraceptive device.

The super-dreadnought HMS Audacious, the 3rd largest ship in the British Navy, was sunk by a mine last month in the North Sea. Most of the crew was rescued by the Olympic. The news was kept secret for more than two weeks, despite being known by the crews and civilian passengers of multiple ships.

If a dreadnought fears nothing, what is a super-dreadnought?

The federal commissioner of Indian Affairs, Cato Sells, admits that Kate Barnard’s accusations about Indians being robbed of millions are true, but says he inherited the situation from previous regimes and he’s now sending probate lawyers to try to straighten it out. He doesn’t seem to be as willing as Barnard to accuse the newish state of Oklahoma of being a giant criminal conspiracy to defraud Indians of their lands, which is what it was.

The Rev. Hugh MacCauley of the Second Presbyterian Church in Paterson, NJ, says that his mention in a recent sermon of a New Jersey woman who adopted two Belgian boys, only to find when they arrived that their hands had been cut off by German soldiers, was just a rumor which he used as an “illustration” and “its value as an illustration was quite independent of its accordance with fact.”

The city of Bakersfield’s new charter, which has to be ratified by the California Legislature, declares ice a public utility and authorizes the city to manufacture and sell it.